1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to unmanned aerial vehicles. More specifically, the invention is a self-contained avionics sensing and flight control system for use onboard a variety of small unmanned aerial vehicles.
2. Description of the Related Art
The “unmanned aerial vehicle” (UAV) is rapidly gaining prominence in the fields of intelligence gathering, surveillance, and/or reconnaissance. In each of these applications, the UAV must be properly equipped for flight and sensing operations to suit a particular application. For larger UAVs (e.g., on the order of hundreds or thousands of pounds), a variety of flight control systems and sensor suites are readily available as size/weight/cost constraints of these items/systems are not of paramount concern. However, as the demand increases for small UAVs (e.g., sometimes with wingspans on the order of 6 inches and weighing less than one pound), there is a need to provide flight control and sensing systems commensurate in scale with the size/weight/cost of the UAV structures.